Rethinking cyberbullying
One incredible teen is poised to accomplish what has flummoxed a legion of parents, educators and academics: she’s taking a bite out of cyberbullying.
Home from school one day a few years ago, then 13-year-old Trisha Prabhu of Naperville, Ill., was browsing news sites. One story stopped her cold: a 12-year old girl had leaped to her death from a water tower after becoming the victim of a vicious social media campaign.
“I thought to myself, why are social media sites still not doing a better job of dealing with this?” Trisha recalls.
Stories of teens driven to desperation by online bullying have become all too common in recent years. They have inspired massive activism — local and national awareness campaigns and support groups. Trisha, too, was inspired to take action. But she wondered, was there a concrete way to stop individual acts of cyberbullying before they even happen?
Trisha is fascinated with the study of the human brain. So she dove into psychology research studies to see if they could shed light on cyberbullying behaviour. She learned the part of the brain that influences decisionmaking and impulse control is the slowest to develop; in teens, it’s still growing.
“An adolescent brain is like a car with no brakes — no stopping, just acting,” she explains.
While scientists had uncovered the connection between brain development and adolescent decision-making, none had ever linked it to cyberbullying. Trisha made the connection: “Adolescents often don’t realize the implications of what they’re doing, or even that they’re cyberbullying.”
And from that connection, she hypothesized a solution. “Maybe we could give teens a nudge and force their brains through the full decisionmaking process.”
Trisha created an experiment to test her hypothesis. As well as an aspiring neuroscientist, she’s an amateur programmer. She created an online test program that presents the user with a bullying statement like, “Hey Carly, you’re so ugly” and asks them if they would post that message on social media. The user has 25 seconds to say “yes” or “no,” forcing them to make an impulse decision.
If some test participants answered “yes,” the program would simply record their decision and end the experiment. For others, however, a “yes” answer would result in a message asking them to stop and think about the potential consequences for the person being bullied. The participant had time to rethink their decision.
Trisha spent countless hours at her local library, getting more than 1,500 people to participate in her experiment. What she found was stunning.
When simply presented with a bullying statement, 71 per cent of teens were willing to post it on social media. But when the software made them stop and think about the consequences, that number dropped to just four per cent.
Psychology professors at Yale University and the University of Chicago have lauded the experiment, commending Trisha’s scientific rigour. She was a finalist in last year’s Google Science Fair.
Now Trisha is moving to the next stage: real world application.
Calling herself a “one-woman coding team,” Trisha is creating software called ReThink, which can be installed as an extension for Google’s Chrome browser. This allows it to mesh with most social media sites. ReThink will spot potential bullying posts, and insert a message asking the user to stop and think before they proceed.
With sophisticated context-sensitive programming, ReThink will be able to tell the difference between posts like “I hate the weather” and “I hate Carly” to accurately identify potential acts of cyberbullying.
Trisha hopes to make ReThink available to the world by the end of this year.
With problems like cyberbullying, we often say there are no easy answers. We often don’t consider including youth when brainstorming solutions for the very problems they face.
Sometimes, however, taking a step back and approaching the problem from a different angle — like Trisha did — yields solutions that are easier than expected and surprisingly effective.
And it’s worth saying even adults — not just teens — can benefit from a little of Trisha’s “stop and rethink” wisdom.
To follow the development of ReThink and download it when it’s finished, visit Trisha Prabhu’s website Rethinkwords.org.